The Islamists still are able to turn out large crowds in the New Egypt, as happened today in Cair0 where hundreds of thousands (how many hundreds varies from news report to news report) turned out in support of President Morsi and controversial Constitution passed over the objections of more liberal parties:

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi received a copy of the country’s draft constitution on Saturday night and announced plans for a December 15 public referendum on the draft.

He called for the vote in a speech before members of the constituent assembly, the 100-member panel that drafted the controversial document. Morsi praised their work, describing it as another step toward “fulfilling the goals” of the revolution that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak last year.

Hossam el-Gheryani, the head of the assembly, also spoke. “We added freedoms in the draft that did not exist before,” he said.

Morsi thanked the nearly two dozen members of the assembly who quit in recent weeks. “Their work can’t be ignored,” Morsi said.

But many feel it has been: Liberals and representatives of the Coptic Church withdrew from deliberations and accused the panel of pushing an Islamist agenda.

His speech follows major protests in Cairo on Saturday, both for and against his presidency. The Muslim Brotherhood organised a major rally outside Cairo University, where protesters carried Egyptian and Saudi flags and posters of Morsi, with banners reading “Together [with Morsi] to save the revolution.”

Witnesses said hundreds of demonstrators were bussed in from outlying governorates in the Nile Delta region. And a number of Muslim clerics in Friday sermons in the southern city of Assiut called the president’s opponents “enemies of God and Islam”.

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Remember the Brotherhood’s notorious motto, which includes the proclamation “the Koran is our law.” It is about to be. In effect, Morsi has used the West’s democracy fetish to put a gun to his population’s head: Either democratically approve anti-democratic sharia or accept the sharia-compliant rule of your democratically elected Islamist despot. Some choice

“However, history usually is made not by majorities but by intense minorities. Remember 1917, and this from Richard Pipes’s “The Russian Revolution”: “The Bolshevik triumph in October was accomplished nine-tenths psychologically: the forces involved were negligible, a few thousand men at most in a nation of one hundred and fifty million.”

السيد مانكي
‏@Sandmonkey
I do not share ur sense of hysteria, people. The islamist protest is much less than I expected. This is ALL the Organized islamists in egypt

Mohamed Samir ‏@MSamir34
@Sandmonkey that’s what i thought , all what we see are gathered by orders all over egypt, their real numbers

السيد مانكي ‏@Sandmonkey
Guys, @lilianwagdy was just at the demo. She says the following: 1) the space is apporx fit for 50.000 people

‏@Sandmonkey
Cntd. 2) the protest is all families, they brought their wives and kids. They won’t attack anyone. 3) very few ikhwan, mostly salafis.

السيد مانكي ‏@Sandmonkey
Cntd.3) That this is truly everyone they had. They mobilized everything. See how few they are. Giza cud alone take them out if they wanted.

السيد مانكي ‏@Sandmonkey
I sigh at a much lower nationwide mobilization. I sigh at them giving out bags & phone cards to get people. They are showing everything now.

‏@Sandmonkey
But here is today’s lesson. They are using all the tricks, no matter how low, to win this fight. They are fighting for survival, are you?

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The Sandmonkey is a former Egyptian military brat educated in the US. He’s what passes for a Liberal or leftist overseas, which translates into a Libertarian in the United States. He is very much one of the good guys.